A lot more changed for Brett Cooper when he became a father than just his sleep patterns.

The Bellator middleweight almost certainly found out plenty about middle-of-the-night feedings and diaper changes. But he also changed up how he approaches his day job as a fighter.

With an opening-round fight against Norman Paraisy (10-2-1 MMA, 0-2 BFC) on Thursday night in Bellator’s Season 8 185-pound tournament, Cooper (17-7 MMA, 4-2 BFC) has a lot on the line – certainly a lot more than he did before fatherhood.

Cooper and Paraisy fight on the main card of Bellator 89, which takes place at Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, N.C. The main card airs at 10 p.m. ET on Spike TV following prelims on Spike.com.

“Once you have a child, it’s not just you anymore,” Cooper told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “It’s about them and their future, the future of our family. It’s a great motivation to me, so I’m looking forward to making them proud.”

But Cooper might try to make them proud in a different way than, say, when he was single. Or than when he was married, but didn’t have a five-month-old girl waiting for him at home.

“I always have to be smart with myself,” he said. “The high-level guys fight smart. They don’t just go out and try to bang and be stupid. The fans like it, but you don’t last long doing it. So having a family has changed a lot of the ways I train and how I compete.

“I used to just go out and try to knock everybody out, or try to submit everybody. And that’s great – there’s nothing wrong with that. But as you progress and become more experienced, and get to the higher levels, guys that stay there – on top – are there because they’re smart, they have a strategy and they fight to win.”

Against Paraisy, Cooper is more than a 3-to-1 favorite to move on into the semifinals of the middleweight tournament, which also features the likes of Brian Rogers, Doug Marshall and Andreas Spang.

And though Cooper takes his opponent seriously, he also believes the fight is his for the taking if he merely executes the way he’s supposed to.

“I don’t like to predict whether I’ll finish Paraisy or not,” he said. “The goal is always to finish. But with the changes I mentioned earlier about my child and family? You’ve got to get the ‘W.’ I can see myself breaking him, though. Maybe in the second round? I could see that – that by the second round, he doesn’t want anymore. Maybe a TKO via strikes? We’ll see. Maybe standing first, then he falls down, and I finish him on the ground? Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe that will happen.”

There are a lot of maybes about what Cooper might do against Paraisy. But there are no maybes about what winning the tournament would mean to him. It would catapult him to another level in his career.

“I’m on the brink of breaking out as a fighter, and winning the tournament would put me over the edge,” Cooper said. “But as far as now? I think a lot of people know me, but if I win the tournament it would be a way different story.

“Winning the tournament would be super awesome. I don’t even know how to describe it. I think I should win, you know? For me, it’d be making my friends and family proud. And making myself proud too, because winning a tournament is a tough thing. … In the beginning for me, it was about self-growth. But an athletic career is only so long. After that’s over, what do you got? You’ve got your family and your friends. To make them proud is the most worthwhile goal I can think of.”

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